This invention relates to improvements in automatic telephone polling equipment of the type where a list of telephone numbers are automatically dialed and a prerecorded message is delivered to each location which responds and, more particularly, to improved telephone polling techniques enabling the selective announcement of one of a plurality of prerecorded messages to each responding location.
Automatic telephone polling equipment has, in recent years, gained wide popularity as a means for reaching a large number of people on an individual, personalized basis, to enable the delivery of a selected message. The message may take the form of a commercial advertisement, a sales solicitation, information bulletins provided to subscribers, or even specialized sale information provided to a select list of customers.
A relatively advanced form of telephone polling equipment is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,160,125; 4,188,510; and 4,201,896. Each patent issued in the name of David S. Bower and Fred J. Smith and is assigned to the same assignee as the instant application. In the telephone polling apparatus set forth in each of these patents, logical techniques are employed to cause polling on the basis of fixed increments from an initial seed telephone number such that, for example, an initial telephone call is placed to a selected initial phone number and thereafter succeeding cells are placed to telephone numbers selected on the basis of fixed increments added to the original seed number. The automatic telephone polling equipment set forth additionally employs logical techniques to ascertain whether or not an appropriate response has been obtained from the location whose telephone number has been automatically dialed and whenever an appropriate response is ascertained, a selected message is automatically issued to that location. This equipment also includes means for recording selected responses from the site contacted so that, in the case of sales solicitations and the like, orders may be directly placed from the site contacted. The automatic telephone polling apparatus disclosed may only act to deliver a single message within a polling sequence, although the individual message to be delivered within a given polling operation may be readily changed and the telephone numbers selected for a given polling operation are based upon fixed increments employed for the purposes of generating successive telephone numbers from the initial seed number selected. The condition of the telephone line being monitored, i.e., busy signal, response by an individual, response by a recording device, dial tone, ringing and the like are also handled through logical techniques.
Improved techniques for ascertaining the condition on the telephone line under conditions which might typically be encountered by such automatic telephone dialing equipment are set forth in U.S. application Ser. No. 101,149, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,356,348, as entitled "TECHNIQUES FOR DETECTING A CONDITION OF RESPONSE ON THE TELEPHONE LINE" which was filed Dec. 7, 1979, in the name of Fred J. Smith and is assigned to the assignee of the instant application. In this application, microprocessor techniques are employed to ascertain time intervals between the zero crosspoints of an input signal from the telephone line and the most prevalent interval present is determined. Once such interval is determined, it is compared with succeeding time intervals of the input signal and the results of the comparison are employed in classifying the input signal as periodic or not.
The nature of the periodic or non-periodic signals thus ascertained may then be further analyzed to determine the precise condition on the telephone line and an absence of signal for a selected period following a detection of periodic or non-periodic input signals may then be relied upon to indicate that an announce operation may be initiated. The techniques set forth in this application for detecting a condition of response on a telephone line quickly enables automatic polling equipment using these techniques to ascertain when a dial tone has been acquired, or when ringing is occurring and when the same has occurred for too long a period, when the dialing operation has resulted in a busy signal, or if the site has been contacted and the nature of the response elicited therefrom, i.e., an individual or an automatic answering device.
While advanced telephone polling equipment of the foregoing kind has proven highly popular, its use per se has spawned a need for even more advanced forms of equipment exhibiting greater flexibility, together with the capability of operating in conjunction with fixed lists of telephone numbers to be dialed. Additionally, a multimessage capability wherein selected messages are issued as a function of the telephone number being automatically dialed would be highly advantageous. Thus, for instance, for applications wherein retain selling establishments employ such equipment to advise selected customers of periodic purchasing opportunities, the use and retention of fixed lists of telephone numbers would be highly convenient. Such lists could be established to represent selected classes of customers appreciating and responsive to periodic advisory messages and the ability to deliver selected ones of a plurality of prerecorded messages would further enable classification of such customer lists into interest categories. Furthermore, a subscriber service providing selected advisory information to one or more defined classes of subscribers would also require a selective, multimessage capability to further categorize selected classes of subscribers into interest groups so that messages containing only desired information were provided to the thus defined subscribers. Similarly, in the advertisement, sales solicitation, or other polling situations, it will be appreciated that once lists of telephone numbers representing receptive candidates were established, a multimessage capability could be employed to further categorize such lists into appropriate interest areas.
While the introduction of microprocessor techniques such as is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 101,149, as aforesaid, readily facilitates the use and retention of telephone number listings in automatic telephone polling equipment employing microprocessors, and the attendant memories thereof, it will be readily appreciated that providing a multimessage capability for such equipment as well as establishing modes of operation which insure that each telephone number in a list is not only called but contacted presents significant additional problems. This position is taken because, as will be readily appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art, continuously repositioning a magnetic media to establish a select prerecorded message at a playback station in response to the message requirements of a next telephone number in a list will result in significant media wear when the nature of an automatic polling system is considered and, in addition, the time involved in continuously repositioning the playback media will cause very significant delays in the overall operation of such automatic polling equipment to the extent that much of the operational time thereof will be consumed by repositioning the playback media. Furthermore, significant media repositioning time will also be consumed under circumstances where the automatic dialing of a given telephone number in a list results in a busy tone or answering by an automatic device, for which conditions no announcement is desirable, but, instead, a recalling of that location at some subsequent time is required. Thus, under these conditions, too, wasteful repositioning time for the magnetic media is consumed and additional wear will occur without an announcement taking place. The requeuing of telephone numbers in the list under conditions where an initial call resulted in the telephone not being answered, a busy signal, or answering by an automatic answering device or the like need also be provided for in a manner such that the operating time of the system is utilized at optimum efficiency while a reasonable number of attempts to call each number in the list results to insure the efficacy of the unattended operation of the system.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide automatic telephone polling methods and apparatus having a multimessage capability.
It is another object of the present invention to provide automatic telephone polling methods and apparatus enabling a list of telephone numbers to be established and automatically dialed under circumstances where each telephone number in the list defines one of a number of messages to be issued in association therewith and upon the receipt of an appropriate response to dialing of a telephone number in said list, the selected message associated therewith is automatically announced.
It is an additional object of the present invention to provide multimessage automatic telephone polling methods and apparatus wherein prerecorded messages are announced in an order to minimize message queuing.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide multimessage automatic telephone polling methods and apparatus wherein prerecorded messages are announced in an order to minimize media wear.
It is another object of the present invention to provide multimessage automatic telephone polling methods and apparatus wherein each successive telephone number automatically dialed is selected on the basis of the prerecorded message currently at the playback station.
It is an additional object of the present invention to provide automatic telephone polling methods and apparatus wherein telephone numbers to be dialed are selected upon a basis corresponding to the number of previous attempts at contacting telephone numbers to be dialed.
Other objects of the present invention will become apparent from the detailed description of an exemplary embodiment thereof which follows and the novel features of the present invention will be particularly pointed out in conjunction with the claims appended hereto.